Jean Francois Portaels, although the last of this school to be mentioned here, is one of the most prominent and meritorious. He was born at Vil vorde in 1820, took the grand prix de Rome early in his academic studies, has travelled =eh in Oriental lands, and has received numerous honors. His style is highly imaginative, and treats both of historic and of sacred subjects. There is much grandeur and dignity in some of his works, espe cially the frescos representing the Progress of Christianity, in the Church of St. Jacques at Brussels. Among his most important productions are The Flight into The Funeral in the Desert, Glyeine—a beautiful ideal A Syrian Caravan surprised by a Si'noom in the Desert, a work of great power, in which the lurid sky and driving sand are painted with the touch of a master. The Aferci going to Bethlehem (fig. 2) is a pleasing rendering of this well-known subject.
Russian Painiers.—We see that Northern art has kept pace with that of Central and Southern Europe in quality if not in quantity; and if we look across to Russia, we observe considerable activity among the painters of that great empire. There seems to have been at first no spontaneous movement toward pictorial art in Russia. Not that the Russians are destitute of a genius for art—on the contrary, for ages they have displayed a genuine original style in architecture and the decorative arts—but until a comparatively recent period their taste for pictorial art was confined to the production of semi-decorative paintings chiefly representing the Virgin and Child, while the strictness of the Grreco-Russian Church regarding sculp ture has greatly retarded the development of the plastic arts in that country.
Russian Acatiemy.—But the material and intellectual development of Russia which began with Peter the Great has been encouraged—one might almost say enforced—by law, and the culture of the art of painting has followed the same form of development. The government decided that Russia must have painters; an academy was established, and a branch school for Russian students similar to that of France was opened at Rome under the patronage of the Russian government. Wherever young men of any talent for painting were found, they were urged to enter the art-school of the government, and their expenses were paid while mastering the details of the profession. At first the painters of Russia, produced thus to order, were of little worth, but gradually, by the process of evolution, there have grown up in that country a number of artists of distinct indi viduality and of more than respectable abilities, who through the styles borrowed front Munich, Paris, and Rome have painted in a marked man ner the most salient traits of the national character.
.1ficlzaclovich Alnycjef, a history-, genre-, and portrait-painter, born in 1815, is one of the most prominent of this school since the death of that much-overrated history-painter, Ivan Akitnovich Akimoff 0754– kcisny Tai•eicg one of the most original of Russian painters, was born in 1813. His father was a serf of a nobleman, who, recognizing the budding talent of the youth, undertook to give him an art-education. But he died when Tatkeleff was nineteen, and the young artist was then drafted into the army, according to the hideous system of the terrible autocracy of Russia. For fifteen years the conscript was forced to suppress his art impulses. At the end of that time he was discharged, and returned home to find that both his parents and his new master were dead; for Tatke leff was a serf, and passed with the estate of the nobleman to a new owner. lie had no money to buy materials for painting, but the widow of his new master gave him the position of teacher in a village school. Finding that lie had a genius for art, she furnished him with means to go to St. Peters burg, but only on condition that lie should not attempt to escape from Russia, and that his choicest works should belong to her. \Vas ever a more tragical career in the history of art ? Is it not difficult to believe that such things could be in the nineteenth century ? And yet, since happiness is comparative, poor Tatkeleff was happy to be able to follow the bent of his genius even in this restricted way—even while most of his works went to grace the walls of his mistress's château.
After her death he was reduced to extreme poverty, and so continued until, in his sixtieth year, he was persuaded to send two paintings to the Exposition of Moscow of 1873, representing episodes in the Crimean war. They produced an immediate sensation; like Byron, Tatkeleff awoke to find himself famous, and rich as well, for the two paintings were pur chased for the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg for the sum of sixty thou sand rubles. Rarely does such a transition in fortune come so rapidly. As the artist had never been heard of before, the editor of the Moscow Gazelle sent a messenger to Borissov to induce him to come to Moscow, where he was presented by Count Baranowicz to the nobility there assem bled. He was a small, slender man, with tufts of silvery hair over his massive brow, and was clad in the costume of the peasantry. Tatkeleff is one of the few great painters of genius whom the modern art of Russia can claim.